


Atar Smiled

by LadyBrooke



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-16 12:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10571559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBrooke/pseuds/LadyBrooke
Summary: He's the only one of his brothers left, and now they say that none of his family ever smiled.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Taming the Muse on Dreamwidth, prompt Smirk.

They said that Atar didn’t know how to smile a real smile, but that he always just smirked.

They lied when they said that. Atar did smile, sometimes, at Grandfather and us, and Amil before they started fighting so much. He even smiled at Findekáno, when he would come to stay with Maitimo. On rarer occasions, he would smile at the rest of our cousins when they were younger, because whatever else Ata was, he was fond of children.

But they all say he only ever smirked. And Ata was smug and conceited, but so were the rest of us, and the rest of the family. It was part of being in the House of Finwë – you learned early that you were better than everyone else, because Grandfather had come to Valinor and was King of our people.

Artaresto’s wife had laughed long and hard at that, and Artaresto had eventually joined her, asking if we thought that it was all worth it and we were so much better, when all it had bought us was Morgoth hunting us down and breaking our family to pieces. Nobody had ever come up with a good answer for him, and then it was too late for any of us to, because she was dead and then he was dead, and those of us who remained knew the folly of fighting with the unanswering dead.

But Ata smiled, though now I fight with both the living and the dead to get them to see that. And my brothers are gone, and they were the ones who could speak the truth with me, and Celebrimbor won’t speak the truth because he is rightfully bitter about how he was treated.

So I’m the only one.

And nobody will listen to me, because I can’t go to their cities.

Elrond may have listened to me once, if I had thought to tell him the stories of Fëanáro the loving father, and not Fëanáro the genius who was better than all of us.

But I didn’t, and now I’m the only one left. And they say the same of my brothers now, that Maitimo was too grim from Findekáno’s death and the loss of his hand, and the twins too broken and in fear of their fates to ever smile, and Morifinwë too angry.

The worst are Curufinwë and Turcafinwë, who they say were always plotting and never to be trusted.

And it’s all lies, all lies that we may deserve but that I wish would just focus on me, because I never smile anymore, because my family is gone and I remain.

They do say that I wander the shores of the sea, constantly lamenting what we did. I do lament that, but there’s so much else I lament as well.

My brothers never should have become known as grim and traitors. We never should have left Valinor, or perhaps Grandfather never should have left these shores to travel there, and we may never have been born, but we never would have suffered.

And Ata would never have smirked.


End file.
